Lisgar drama teacher Katie Bunting takes the lead in GCTC season-opener You Are Happy

Tickets: $42 to $58, rush tickets $15 for students and $33 for adults at gctc.ca and the GCTC box office

Ottawa actor and high school drama and English teacher Katie Bunting graduates to her first leading role at the Great Canadian Theatre Company when You Are Happy, a comedy about millennial love, opens Saturday.

Below, Bunting discusses what it’s meant to be a drama student, a drama teacher, an actor and a millennial seeking happiness.

Q: When did the acting bug first bite you?

A: When I graduated from Adam Scott CVI in Peterborough, I loved all the arts. If you’d asked me then, I would have said that I wanted to be a singer. I moved to Ottawa to study history and French at the University of Ottawa, figuring that I’d pursue all of the arts that I loved on the side. But I signed up for one theatre class in my first year, a class where we went to see a play every second week and then would discuss it the following class. I loved it.

I entered the theatre program in my second year and I remember the exact moment when the bug bit me. It was my first scene study with a fellow student. We were given time to come in for one-on-one coaching with our professor and she kept stopping me and having me do it again. It was the first time I was being pushed and coached to find honesty and authenticity in the moment as an actor and to be present and open to this experience. It was a completely different kind of challenge than I’d ever felt. It was exhilarating.

That year, I was cast as Alice in the university’s production of Alice in Wonderland called Jabberwocky. I was hooked. I dropped my French studies and went down to three classes a semester so that I could be in or work on a production with the university’s Drama Guild every semester.

Q:. You teach drama as well as act. Tell me about that.

A: I went to teacher’s college to become a supply teacher so that I would have meaningful work between acting contracts. I started supply teaching for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board when I graduated from Queen’s University and moved back to Ottawa in 2010 to continue to pursue acting. It was a great choice and has worked really well for me. Over the past seven years of supply and short-term contract teaching, several principals and vice-principals in particular have been incredibly supportive and would always have work for me in between acting gigs.

I was inspired to take a part-time permanent teaching contract at Lisgar Collegiate last year because of the school’s administration. They are incredibly supportive of my acting career and value having a professional artist as part of their teaching staff.

I’ve worked really hard to create space in my life for two careers simultaneously. I’m very grateful, especially with this being my GCTC debut. I’m an actor who also has permanent and complimentary work in a field that they love.

Q: How do teaching drama and acting support each other?

A: It was really moving last year for my drama students to come and see me in a production at the Gladstone Theatre while I was teaching them. To be able to share the process and then the production with them was a thrill. It reminded me of how thrilling it was to see plays as a student.

My students helped me prepare for my first audition for You Are Happy. The day of my audition I did a “how-to-audition-101” workshop with my students. At the end, they got to be the directors auditioning me. What a thrill to be able to share with them that I ended up getting the part and to be able to honestly tell them that they helped me to prepare.

Q: What appeals to you about You Are Happy?

A: I love that it’s a translation of a new French-Canadian play by a female playwright. I love the language. I love its poetry. I love the play’s structure. I love the characters and their dialogue. I love how much it makes me laugh. I love that we break the fourth wall — an audience gets to hear the characters’ thoughts. It feels new, fresh.

I have always loved the absurd when it comes to theatre, especially when I get to play in that world. Within this story, some of the circumstances are absurd. But within those circumstances there is so much that I, and we, can identify with. It’s a story about relationships, familial and romantic. It’s a story about love, about what it means to be happy, about societal norms, about mental health. There is just so much that I would want to discuss with my class if we were to study this play together. That excites me.

Q: Tell me about the character you play. How much do you relate to her?

A: Chloe’s a young, single waitress and she keeps her cards close. Not sure I can say much more than that about her predicament without giving too much away!

I am very lucky to have fallen in love with my husband 12 years ago. (But) even though I haven’t had to relate to Chloe’s singleness for some time, I very much remember the deep desire to find love. And at the same time, there was a tension there. I didn’t always want to want it so badly. I wanted to feel strong and whole on my own. I remember my aunt telling me after a breakup: “It’s OK to want to be loved. Wanting love, and needing love, are different. Yeah, you’re OK on your own. But it doesn’t make you weak or less independent to want it.” So, I can relate to Chloe’s inner turmoil.

Q: To what degree does this play speak to your generation?

A: The play explores the lives of three characters, all in search of happiness and their definitions are not necessarily the same. This speaks to my generation because we’ve grown up with a definition of happiness that is based on a very narrow societal norm — of being in a good career by a certain age, being married by a certain age, etc. Having witnessed our parents who perhaps fulfilled these societal expectations, and realizing that they weren’t and aren’t perhaps all happy, we’re simultaneously wanting to redefine the definition and fit into the definition at the same time. We’re being pulled in two directions. We want to get married and have kids, but we want to have fulfilling careers as well. We want to own a house, but prices have never been higher. We want work-life balance, but many of us are working more than one insecure career simultaneously. We’re a generation trying to achieve it all on our own terms and this play is a great exploration of that.